Large product development projects require the sharing of product design information among many diverse team members. These team members include prime contractor management, engineers, designers, and manufacturing personnel. Additionally, one or more subcontractors may require access to the design information.
Development of the product may occur in many different locations. For instance, the top-level design may be performed at the prime contractor's facility with the various lower level parts of the product being designed at the subcontractors' facilities. Moreover, manufacturing of the lower level parts may occur at another location with top-level assembly occurring at yet another location. At any of these locations, project personnel may require access to design information to perform their duties.
The assembled product may be shipped to another location for testing after which it is sold and placed in operation. Highly mobile products, such as aircraft, may additionally operate over large regions, throughout which operations, maintenance, and repair activity may necessitate instantaneous access to design information. Since customers and operational experience may provide feedback to the design team, the term “development” herein includes all phases of a product's life. Thus, it has long been felt necessary to provide access to design information at many independent locations that may be separated by significant distances.
Hindering the ability to share design information, many supplementary or task specific CAD applications incorporate proprietary data structures that may only be accessed via expensive licenses. Thus, only those project personnel with licensed copies of the supplemental CAD application may access the design information. In the alternative, applications have become available which are known as low-end viewers. Low-end viewers enable personnel to access design information stored in a format native to a foundation CAD product. Advantageously, low end viewers are less expensive to license and buy than design type products and are compatible with personal computers which are much less expensive than the CAD workstations which would otherwise be required for design access.
However, the presence of the proprietary data structures hides certain design information from low-end viewers. Worse yet, some of the proprietary data structures used by supplemental CAD packages specifically relate to the design information of composite parts.
Since commercial requirements are increasingly demanding the use of composite parts, the use of these proprietary data structures hinders the development of many commercially lucrative products. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide tools and methods to develop composite parts with CAD applications while allowing low-end viewers at any project location full access to design information regarding the composite part.